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Snake Lords of the Desert 4

For Necross

By Draconicon

"Why does father have to be so good with numbers?"

Lorenus shook his head, feeling considerably lighter than he had earlier that day. Unfortunately, it was not a burden of guilt that had been lifted from him, but a burden of money, money that had been put back into his father's coffers after he had been skimming the treasury for a while. The naga winced as he thought about how much less he would be able to spend over the next few weeks, but he knew that it was better to pay it off rather than let himself be investigated.

After all, father knew that he'd been spending money, and possibly even knew that he'd been spending it on slaves. It was a big step to go from that to find out what he was really doing with them.

The naga slithered down the family tower, making his way all the way to the base of the structure. The slave quarters and training areas were down there, and he needed the privacy that the training areas allowed to test out his latest ideas. He was unaccompanied, save by his own thoughts.

If the hypnosis is done via chains that touch on different concepts as well as different memories, they'll be a great deal harder to detach than I thought, he thought to himself. Respect for someone else makes for an interesting anchor, for that matter. If you remove the respect, you remove your opinions of them that are positive, and you can end up underestimating them...

His father had chosen a good link for his own hypnotic chains. Losing that respect could easily start leading to him becoming overconfident, and if he did that, then he would be brought down, and quickly. Lorenus knew his father's skill in the political and physical arena. Better not to risk things until he was completely ready for him.

But that didn't mean he couldn't work on his other ideas.

The slave training area was already staffed with a number of slaves that had received the basic inductions, the most unbreakable foundations that all had to be conditioned with before they could be taken to market or put to greater conditioning. He knew that they were supposed to be unbreakable, and that there were nagas in the family - and out in the world - that specialized in bringing such unbreakable foundations to bear. It was the perfect set of chains to attempt to break.

Lorenus slithered in, shutting the door behind him. The room was empty of other masters. The only ones that called this place home were the slaves, and they were tied to the walls, dangling in some cases, standing in others, but all with their wrists bound and hands above their heads.

He smiled to himself as he slithered over to one such slave, a gazelle that, by records, had been captured and conditioned two days ago. His chains would be strong, settled, but not necessarily so permanent yet. He would be a good one to start with.

Lorenus slithered up to him, lifting the gazelle's head to face his own. He smiled slightly, his tongue flicking back and forth across his fangs as he gazed into the slave's face. Little awareness remained, though that would return in time. Right now, he was so deep that he would likely starve if it wasn't for the fact that the slave attendants were so devoted to their job.

He let go, observing the gazelle's body. Slight, suited for leaping as most of the species was, it presented a very slender build. Not even much padding in the backside for that matter, something that would doubtlessly count against him in the slave auctions.

But it meant that he probably had relied on it before, relied on being faster, rather than smarter, than his adversaries. Which would mean he had little in the way of mental defenses.

"Open your eyesssss."

The voice of a naga caught the gazelle's attention immediately, and the slave looked up without thinking. Instantly, Lorenus's eyes met the gazelle's blank ones, and they were linked.

He slipped forward, making his way into the slave's mind. It was cloudy, he realized, fogged with the haze that came with new slavery. Unlike some of his own servants and slaves, this one hadn't been smart enough to try anything that would save it. All it had managed to do was run for a while, and likely gotten lost in the fog, unable to think, unable to get free.

The naga pushed himself through the mist, making his way deeper into the gazelle's mind. The further he went, the more he could feel the chains around him, invisible, but not intangible. He could 'hear' them, swaying in the air, carrying their commands about, letting it settle in constant whispers in the slave's mind. It was an early set, he knew, and it was one that would gradually fall and form the 'floor' in the expanse that they were in, but for the moment, they were like swinging ghosts in the air.

Lorenus paused, 'standing' coiled in the middle of a puddle. It was a reflective pool, he realized, something that would be the one thing that would keep a slave from being bound. This would be where the mind had run to hide, and would be where it was waiting. For here...

They can see themselves as they are, and as they were.

A pool of memory was something that various slaves had in their heads, but usually only the more ill-educated ones. Once one began to read, the library and organized scrolls of memory began to take place. For those that were illiterate, it was more commonly a pool, reflections of the past and submerged moments that could be pulled out again. And, thankfully, the pool was quite reflective.

Lorenus tilted his upper body to the side as the gazelle came running at him, screaming and shouting and gibbering in a most insane way. He kept his arms behind his back, dodging his body to one direction and then another, showing no difficulty in keeping himself from being hit. The gazelle kept swinging, dragging one weapon after another out of the pool. Most were ephemeral, but here and there were ones that weren't.

It didn't take long to exhaust the already-spent slave, and the gazelle hit the ground. Lorenus slithered forward, picking the gazelle up by the throat, and held him on his tiptoes.

"Be sssstill. I want to help."

He narrowed his eyes at the mental projection of the gazelle's self, and pushed further in. The 'body' was empty, the space that was not filled with memories, the place where there was not attachment or thought. It was only a projection, something to move, but not be filled. It was the point where the White Out technique could work.

He pushed himself in, collecting the feeling of light, and he looked out through the gazelle's eyes. This was the risky part. If he did this wrong, he could obliterate the mental projection of himself, and possibly a few memories. He just had to do it right...

As he gathered the light, he looked around. So much mist...It would be hard to see this properly, but if he did it right...

With a deep breath, the snake released -

#

"AGH! Ow, ow, ow, ow, OW that hurt..."

Lorenus slithered back from the slave, rubbing his head as a migraine hit him hard. He shook his head a few times, rubbing on either side of his hood, and hissed under his breath.

Mmmph...okay...ow...never do that again...at least, not like that.

The projection of light had knocked him right out, but at least he had managed to get a good glimpse at the inside of the mind while he was doing it. The chains had been many and myriad, stretching like a trap all around memory. That was interesting, very interesting indeed, as it meant that it held the mind hostage if it ever went into memory, leaving it unable to leave it, or unable to get back to it without getting trapped.

Which means that our baseline relies on breaking the subject's understanding of its own memory, accepting our reality while only allowing subjective dips into it, he thought. Not much use in finding out how to snap the chains, but it does give me something. But what if -

"Brother?"

He whipped his head around. One of his siblings, Tema, stood in the doorway of the slave training quarters. A belated memory rose in the back of his mind, remembering a conversation from dinner. Tema had been talking about a new gazelle that he had purchased and planned to start training...the next day...

Crap...

The other naga, darker scaled and almost pure black, slithered over to him with anger in his eyes. One strong arm was already lifted.

"You sssseek to ssssupplant my control with my sssslaves?"

"Now, brother, think thissss through. I would never -"

CRACK!

Lorenus slithered back a pace, rubbing his face as a bruise already started to form under his scales. With one eye closed, he whipped his head back up and -

And entered.

For a brief moment, he entered Tema's mind. They struggled, arm to arm, but in the mental realm, his strength more than matched his brother's. They fought, squirmed, and slithered about each other, their coils nearly battering each other down more than once.

All around them, he was aware of their father's touch, the hypnotic chains that their princely sire had left them in. He grimaced, knowing that if he made a wrong move, he could end up in chains himself...

But what if...

Once more, he focused on the projection beneath him. If he didn't just push for a white out observation, if he did it differently, there was a chance. Lorenus slid his control forward, felt a momentary push back against his mind as he worked on summoning the light. He aimed it outwards, thinking back to the foundation, and behind it, left a little treat for his brother.

White light flared...and darkness followed.

#

Lorenus groaned as he opened his eyes, slowly lifting himself up from his twisted coils on the floor. He rubbed his head, and then looked around.

He wasn't in jail, and he wasn't dead. Those were two very, very good outcomes, particularly considering what he had just done. But where was -

Tema stood almost at attention to his side, so stiff and still that he had almost considered his brother to be a decoration rather than a living being for a moment. The naga blinked a few times, and then waved his hand in front of his brother's face. Slowly, Tema turned to look at him.

"Masssster?"

"Oh...ssssso that part workssss, at leasssst."

He took a quick look through his brother's eyes, and he was surprised to see that his gamble had...well, at least mostly worked. It wasn't perfect, by any means, but it had done something.

Rather than attacking his father's chains directly, he had gone with something a little more subtle. He went for the older hypnotic patterns that were laid down under it, the foundation chains that were laid underneath their father's. Rather than going for the bits and pieces, he had gone for the part that held it all up.

Of course, it had its drawbacks. The White Out effect had left his brother with a few missing memories, and his father's chains did still exist. However, they were no longer the primary determinants in his brother's decision-making process. There was room for a higher level of orders.

His orders, perhaps.

Lorenus smiled to himself, rubbing his hands together as he considered the options. The slight guilt at using his own siblings this way faded quickly, leaving him with only the idea of how this would mess with his father. There was no doubt in his mind that his princely sire would have some plans against this sort of rebellion, but it would be interesting to see if his father had planned for a full-scale rebellion from all his children at once.

And not to mention...

He began to slither around his brother, dragging his coils around the stationary snake. The dark naga didn't say anything, didn't move, only stared straight ahead. Lorenus knew that there would need to be something done about that soon, but there was time. There was plenty of time for the pair of them to have a little...fun.

He leaned in, whispering to his brother.

"Have you ever coiled with a male before, Tema?"

"No."

"You will now."

It was simple enough to instruct his brother as to the positioning for such an act, and as he wrapped himself around the darker naga, he found himself remembering the last time that he had done this. Long ago, when he was new to adulthood, when he had found a low-class naga that had allowed this to be done for money, he had taken them. It had been one of the best experiences of his life, and few things had rivaled it among his slaves.

His brother, however, was far tighter than the naga whore had been, and he groaned as he slid both his cocks into the other prince's tight little hole.

"Mmmm, you will love thissss. You will come to enjoy it...greatly."

"Yesssss, masssster."

"Good boy. Good brother..."

The End